Masterpieces: Sony’s PS3 re-release of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is a must-buy

To celebrate the release of the updated Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, we're …

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are both modern gaming masterpieces. Both have achingly beautiful art direction, subtle but moving stories, and a following that's mortally insulted if you speak ill of either game. Sony has wisely decided to upgrade the graphics and framerates of both titles, to add support for stereoscopic 3D, and to package them together in a ridiculously lush $40 package. Heck, you can even reverse the cover art to make it look classier on your shelf. This is a simple review: you should buy this package.

Each game is now displayed in 1080p, running at a much-improved 30 frames per second in 7.1 surround sound with a full array of trophies. Seeing these games in widescreen is amazing, and the scale of Shadow of the Colossus comes across brilliantly due to the updated graphics and the smoother action. I was lucky enough to be reviewing a 3D monitor when this game came into the office, so I played a large chunk of each game in 3D. Shadow of the Colossus benefited from the extra depth much more than Ico did, with the Colossi looking even more formidable through the active-shutter glasses.

You'll also get a decent but unremarkable selection of bonus content:

Early concept and prototype video montage of Ico

Early concept and prototype video montage of Shadow of the Colossus

Initial concept video for NICO, a game that was never made but turned into Shadow of the Colossus, including an on-camera introduction from creator Fumito Ueda

A 12-minute behind-the-scenes video filmed on location at the SCEI offices in Japan. This video features interviews with key production staff about the making of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, as well as concept art and prototype footage of all the games, and exclusive never-before-seen footage of The Last Guardian

Playing the re-released games with clearer textures and 16X9 aspect ratio is an amazing experience

Instead of re-reviewing each game, here are the Masterpiece articles we've published for each game. It's a great time to remember why these games are so beloved before playing them in a grand new way.

Enjoy!

Ico (given Masterpiece status by John Siracusa)

Ask a devoted gamer to make a short list of the best games of all time and there's a good chance that Ico will make an appearance. Indeed, due to its relative obscurity, Ico is often enthusiastically promoted to more casual gamers by its rabid fans, and offered up to non-gamers as a paragon of the medium.

This is actually kind of a shame. Just as an understanding of the history of cinema is needed to fully appreciate a movie like Citizen Kane, a deep personal history with video games can raise the experience of playing Ico from merely enjoyable to revelatory. This game generates rabid fans for a reason.

Ico opens with an in-engine cutscene showing a boy being transported by armed men on horseback through a secret passage into an vast, apparently abandoned castle. The men carefully place the boy into an upright stone sarcophagus, putting his hands in stocks, all the while asking him for understanding. "Do not be angry with us. This is for the good of the village," they say. What originally appeared to be a viking-style helmet on the boy's head now bears reconsideration. Does the boy have...horns?

The sarcophagus closes. The men leave. The camera pulls back to reveal a huge room filled with similar sarcophagi, each presumably containing the remains of another small, horned boy.

What's missing from this screen?

The boy thrashes against the stocks, trying to escape. A lucky crack in the stonework finally causes the sarcophagus to topple and crack open. He is free but alone, and in a strange place.

The camera moves into a traditional third-person view, and the telltale black letterbox bars that denoted cutscenes in the pre-HD era fade away. The player is now in control and the game has begun. But other than the boy standing alone in a castle, the screen is bare. There is no health meter, no mini-map, no targeting reticle, no equipped weapon indicator, no score, no level, no number of lives, no nothing. No HUD of any kind.

There's also no music, just the resonant moan of the wind passing through the castle walls, and the loud, echoing footfalls as you start to explore.

Just a few minutes in and everything about this game is whispering its intent to be different. The mood of the opening cutscene is contemplative, not bombastic. Nothing explodes; no one is murdered; there aren't even any raised voices. On the surface it seems timid, almost boring, but it quietly insists that you take this game seriously.

Technological limits and choices

Ico was originally a PlayStation 2 game, released in 2001, less than a year after the PS2 came to the US. Even as a first-party title, Ico had to contend with a new hardware platform whose potential had yet to be fully explored. Other launch or near-launch titles faced similar problems, and most chose the safest route, using straightforward extrapolations of earlier PlayStation 1 graphics engines. Team Ico chose differently.

Rather than extending all areas of PS1 game engine technology to new heights, Ico's developers decided to focus on a few very specific engine features. You can see the results of this decision in any screenshot from Ico. The textures are muddy and repetitive. The geometry is simple. At a glance, you might even mistake it for a PS1 game. But what you definitely won't do is mistake it for any other game. Ico looks different.

The lighting engine is the first standout feature. Where other games were content to slap textures onto geometry, light the scene by fading from full-saturation color to black, and call it a day, Ico employs a huge (especially for its time) dynamic range of light and color saturation laid over an almost comically limited set of textures. Like an impressionist painting, Ico is a mess close-up, but it becomes ever more convincing as you pull back to take in the entire scene. Ico aims to achieve a mood, an atmosphere, an emotional result. The graphics are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Just look at the three screenshots below, all of which feature the same handful of repetitive, low-resolution stone block textures.

One set of textures plus a great lighting engine: three very different looks

By embracing the limitations of the hardware rather than fighting them, Ico made game players and designers alike expand their notions of "realism" beyond quantifiable features like texture resolution and number of triangles per second.

Ico took a similar approach to geometry. Stone buildings are simple to model with a limited number of polygons. Team Ico seized this opportunity and decided to expend computing power not on more varied environments, but on draw distance and scale. Ico presents towering structures and expansive vistas. The lighting complements this choice, of course. Vast distances don't seem quite so vast if everything is tack-sharp and brightly colored all the way to the horizon.

The last big piece of Ico's technology budget was spent on character animation. The character models themselves have limited detail, but the extensive movement and climbing animations, all painstakingly created by hand, stand head and shoulders above the generic Male Space Marine animations of the day. The boy moves like a little boy. He struggles to climb up ledges. He slips and falls in pre-pubescent spasms. He runs and leaps with childlike abandon. All of this cements the character and pulls the player into the game.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, you discover that a mysterious girl is also trapped in the castle. Together, the two of you must escape. On the surface, this sounds like a gameplay doomsday scenario: an entire game spent playing one long escort mission. But that's not how it plays out at all.

Save me

In lesser games, the experience of escaping the castle with the girl (Yorda) in tow would crash on the rocks of imperfect pathfinding algorithms and the feelings of powerlessness and frustration that have been the hallmark of escort missions since time immemorial. But in Ico, you don't have to rely on Yorda's ability to follow you. You can take her by the hand and lead here where you want to go.

It's a brilliant game design decision, and it's implemented beautifully in the engine. Seeing the animation as you dash across the screen leading Yorda by the hand is akin to seeing the original Prince of Persia for the first time. It's still startling even in today's age of sophisticated procedural animation, if only because games so rarely choose to show something as "unmanly" as leading another person by the hand.

The gameplay itself consists of solving environmental puzzles and keeping Yorda away from enemies who are trying to take her away from you. The puzzles are good, though there's little that hasn't been seen before. But the purity of purpose elevates the experience. You're not solving an environmental puzzle so you can get to the next power-up or boss fight. Escaping the castle is the game. There's no ice level, fire level, jungle level, vehicle section, etc. There's you, Yorda, the castle, the world. Everything is of a piece. It's a seamless, coherent experience.

This is the type of thing that does not impress immediately, but as you play, the setting slowly seduces you. Remember, there's nothing on the screen to take you out of the moment, to chip away at your suspension of disbelief.

The combat fits neatly into the mold of this seamless world—which is to say, it breaks the mold of traditional video game combat. Your first weapon is a wooden stick; later, you get a sword. You can only carry one weapon at a time. There are a handful of enemies, all roughly the same size and appearance (a lovely, dream-like smoke effect with glowing eyes—another example of concentrating development effort where it counts).

Combat consists entirely of whacking these enemies with whichever stick-like weapon you happen to have. There are no combos, dodges, parries, fatalities, or quick-time events. There's just a single attack button. Furthermore, the combat is overwhelmingly defensive. Enemies appear out of dark, magical holes and try to pull Yorda back down with them.

The first encounter with these enemies can be strangely disconcerting. A few appear and you instinctively bat them away with your stick. But all the while, your inner gamer is being thrown off balance. There are no health meters with which to gauge your progress. Are these enemies invincible? Can they kill me? What are the rules here? The boy in the game doesn't know, so you don't know either.

As you progress, and the number of enemies increases and the environments get larger, combat becomes surprisingly intense. But unlike most games, the drama is entirely within the game world. There is no combat system to be mastered or power-ups to be carefully managed. You stop thinking about that stuff; you stop thinking like a gamer. You're just a boy frantically trying to keep an overwhelming enemy at bay, to keep Yorda safe.

Storytelling

Ico is a quintessentially Japanese game. The story unfolds slowly, and with restraint. There's a decidedly un-western expectation that the player doesn't need every detail of the plot and backstory explained. After all, why would the forces of evil explain themselves to this boy? You may not understand everything because the boy doesn't understand everything. But in the end, it matters little. The opening cutscene alone is enough to propel the game to its conclusion. Everything unfolds naturally from there, with relatively few interruptions for more exposition.

The voice acting is likewise limited, and everything is subtitled. Oddly for a top-tier first-party game, the Japanese voices (with English subtitles) are used in the US release. This might have been a cost-saving measure, but I think it actually enhances the experience by making it seem more exotic. (It also neatly avoids the grim but all-too-likely possibility—especially in 2001—of horrible voice work by English-speaking actors.) Going even further in the same direction, Yorda is subtitled in undecipherable runes, emphasizing the language barrier between her and the boy.

There's not much music in the game, but the few motifs that punctuate dramatic and quiet moments alike are exquisite. The silence between these moments is filled with sounds of the environment: footsteps on stone, the distant ocean, a lone bird calling, the ever-present wind. When you call out for Yorda to follow you, or she gasps off-screen as an enemy grabs her, these sounds pierce the quiet to great effect. And of course, there are no "game sounds" to destroy the illusion: no lock-on beeps, weapon-change clicks, critical hit klaxons, etc.

You were there

A brief interlude

Ico has so many little touches that I'd like to describe, but I don't want to spoil it any more than I already have, so I'll limit myself to just one. Ico features an old-school explicit game-saving mechanism, but true to form, it's done in a way that's both tender and unobtrusive. You save by sitting down on what look like stone couches, which are strategically placed throughout the game. But sitting down alone won't do it; both you and Yorda must sit together.

There is no explicit instruction on this matter in the game. Instead, the first time you encounter one of these couches, Yorda sits down on her own and motions for you to come over, patting the seat next to her. Within the game world as without, saving is a respite from the struggle.

Ico takes only six to ten hours to complete. An experienced gamer can probably do it in one sitting. This often happens simply because the game is so engrossing. Like many installments in the Metroid series, and like other games that are built on a sense of isolation and a man-versus-environment theme, Ico is best played alone, preferably in the dark and without interruptions. This is not a party game. This is traditional single-player gaming at its finest.

The difficulty of finding a copy of this nearly ten-year-old game and the removal of PS2 compatibility from PlayStation 3 hardware means that there are many people, even dedicated gamers, who have still never played Ico. The PS3 remake will make playing a lot easier, but don't be misled. I suspect there's precious little that high-definition graphics will add to the experience beyond, perhaps, helping to overcome some people's resistance to what might seem like "retro" gaming.

Though Ico might come and go in a day or two of play time, the experience stays with you much longer. By removing much of the artifice of conventional video games, Ico achieves a level of verisimilitude far beyond what seems possible, especially given its technical limits.

All of this is not to say that Ico is somehow better than the very best of today's more conventional games. What Ico offers is not a heretofore unattained height of enjoyment and engagement, but rather, a different mountain range to climb. Though modern gaming spans many genres and platforms, there's still an overarching value system that permeates the medium. Ico is made according to a very different set of priorities. The result is something very special, perhaps never to be seen again.

Ico is probably the one of the best games I ever played (easily in my top 3 of all time). I loved it when it came out on the PS2 and I think I finished it in 2 days the first time cause I couldn't stop playing it. The sequel could not come out fast enough for me. Unfortunately that sequel was Shadow of the Colossus and don't get me wrong, SotC is a very good game, it (to me anyway) was not nearly as good as Ico. For some reason Ico just felt more personal for some reason, while SotC just felt like another game to me.

I would have ordered this already, but I have to wait since my wallet is pretty thin at this time . I could technically go play the PS2 version again since I have the disc and a BC PS3, but I want to replay it in one sitting when I get the updated version.

Giant Bomb did a QuickLook of both; they were blown away by how good Shadow looked, in particular. It's an incredibly frustrating video to watch, though, because they both had completely forgotten the grip mechanic (which is the essential mechanic in the game), so they kept falling off the Colossus, then jumping back on with about 2 pixels of grip, then wondering why they they were "shaken off" so fast.

I own both games, and have both a PS2 and a backwards-compatible PS3; I've played both on both systems (the upscaling on the PS3 is really nice). I'll be buying the new disc anyway - it sounds like they've been treated well, and I'm really looking forward to playing an even better-looking and smoother-running version of Shadow.

SotC is the only game that made me physically throw my controller at the screen.

I think the brilliance of Ico blinded people to the terrible controls and utterly frustrating gameplay of SotC. Sure it's pretty and imaginative, but as a game it just fails on pretty much every count, IMHO.

SotC is the only game that made me physically throw my controller at the screen. I think the brilliance of Ico blinded people to the terrible controls and utterly frustrating gameplay of SotC. Sure it's pretty and imaginative, but as a game it just fails on pretty much every count, IMHO.

I've played Shadow multiple times, and haven't had more problems with the controls than I generally do with the average Japanese game, and never had problems with the gameplay. It may be a failure for you, but not for many, many others.

I think I am in the vast minority when I say I am really not interested. I never played the originals, and only knew of thier existence through game press fanboy raves. They have been put on the highest pedestals I have ever seen, so there is no way they could do anything besides disappoint me.

These games make me want a PS3, since I have had multiple PS2's die on me over the years. Have not been able to play them (Ico and SotC) for quite some time. If Last Guardian turns out to be as good as it should be, and I get rich enough to have an HD TV, it will be a for sure thing.

SotC is one of the best games I have ever played. At for the time the graphics and huge landscapes were amazing.

So, since you are running the PS2 reviews, these are scene-for-scene, control-for-control match to the originals? Same sound tracks (I assume remastered?) same art style but with higher pixel count and support for 3D hardware? You’ll still need a translator to play?

As long as the games are still successful enough that they keep on making these brilliant pieces of art, I don't care what the rest of the world thinks.

Partly my fear is that the games won't sell and folks, particularly people like Team Ico, will just stop trying to be creative and just make a shooter.

I know. But it's getting so hard to support all of these really great developers/publishers at the same time. I missed out on Ico and SoTC because I never bought a PS2. I really want this game bad, but the problem for me is that there are just too many games out now, and I can only buy so many (otherwise, they just sit on the shelf).

So far this year, I have bought Yakuza 4 (love that franchise, and played though it twice to platinum it), Final Fantasy XIII, Vanquish, Demon's Souls ( platinumed that, and it took me a long time), 3D Dot Game Heroes, Catherine (love ATLUS), Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, God of War 3, and Killzone 3. I've got Dark Souls coming in the next week or two, so that's going to keep me busy for a while. At the same time, I'm missing Persona 2 on the PSP (really wanted to get that one, but will have to wait), and now this one. Then on the PSN front, I bought Beyond Good & Evil HD, and a ton of other PSN games.

I really wanted a few others that really haven't sold well, like White Knight Chronicles and Atlier Rorona (and a few others that I just can't recall). It's just too much to buy so many games that I've had to really cut myself back and force myself to finish one before moving onto the next.

I balked at the release price and rolled my eyes at the low framerates of early games. I chuckled when you removed linux support, backwards-compatibility, and dropped my jaw (repeatedly) when your servers were hacked. "LOL PS3," I mused out loud,"I will never buy you." This autumn, I was planning to upgrade the PC, or maybe pad my retirement savings. But that is all in the past, for you have found my weakness.

Just played these 2 games last year for the first time (don't have a PS3, so waiting for the remakes wouldn't do me any good). Both games are really great, although they're hyped a bit too much by fanboys. That said, I'd recommend them to anyone today to check out.

I do agree about the SotC controls though - they're pretty horrible. I didn't really have the controls totally down until _after_ I beat the first collosus (which means that first battle was entirely more difficult than it needed to be for me). Eventually, you'll get the controls, but they devs could have made life easier and gone with something more intuitive.

SotC is the only game that made me physically throw my controller at the screen.

I think the brilliance of Ico blinded people to the terrible controls and utterly frustrating gameplay of SotC. Sure it's pretty and imaginative, but as a game it just fails on pretty much every count, IMHO.

++ Also add to the that the horrible, blinding implementation of HDR and extremely poor textures on anything other than the Collosi.

SoTC could have been a masterpiece. but the execution let it down badly.